Languages for Automation, Softcover reprint of the original 1st ed. 1985 Management and Information Systems Series

Two central ideas in the movement toward advanced automation systems are the office-of-the-future (or office automation system), and the factory­ of-the-future (or factory automation system). An office automation system is an integrated system with diversified office equipment, communication devices, intelligent terminals, intelligent copiers, etc., for providing information management and control in a dis­ tributed office environment. A factory automation system is also an inte­ grated system with programmable machine tools, robots, and other pro­ cess equipment such as new "peripherals," for providing manufacturing information management and control. Such advanced automation systems can be regarded as the response to the demand for greater variety, greater flexibility, customized designs, rapid response, and 'Just-in-time" delivery of office services or manufac­ tured goods. The economy of scope, which allows the production of a vari­ ety of similar products in random order, gradually replaces the economy of scale derived from overall volume of operations. In other words, we are gradually switching from the production of large volumes of standard products to systems for the production of a wide variety of similar products in small batches. This is the phenomenon of "demassification" of the marketplace, as described by Alvin Toffier in The Third Wave.

I Office Automation.- 1. Office Information Systems Overview.- 2. Logic Programming Tailored for Office Procedure Automation.- 3. opal: An Office Procedure Automation Language For Local Area Network Environments Via Active Mailing and Program Dispatching.- 4. Tools for Forms Administrators.- 5. A Form-Based Language for Office Automation.- II Query Languages.- 6. Requirements for Developing Natural Language Query Applications.- 7. Semantic Representations for Natural Language Query Processing.- 8. Design of an Easy-to-Use Query Language for Office Automation.- III Data Management.- 9. The Structure of Abstract Document Objects.- 10. An Object Management System for Office Applications.- 11. tm—An Object-Oriented Language for CAD and Required Database Capabilities.- 12. A CAD/CAM Database Management System and Its Query Language.- 13. Self-Describing and Self-Documenting Database Systems.- IV Communication Management.- 14. Message Management in Office Information Systems.- 15. Audio-Document Teleconferencing in the Automated Office.- 16. Module Level Communication Protocol Specifications of Applications Software for Distributed Computing Systems.- 17. The GCP Language and its Implementation.- 18. A Language for the Description of Concurrent Systems Modeled by Colored Petri Nets: Application to the Control of Flexible Manufacturing Systems.- V Robotics and the CAD/CAM Languages.- 19. Introduction to Computer-Aided Design and Computer-Aided Manufacturing.- 20. Perceptual Robotics: Toward a Language for the Integration of Sensation and Perception in a Dextrous Robot Hand.- 21. Production Systems for Multirobot Control: A Tutorial.- 22. A Programming Language for Sophisticated Robot Sensing and Sensor-Based Control.- 23. Computer-Aided Design of Digital Systems: Language,Data Structures, and Simulation.- VI Management and Automation.- 24. Implications of Computer-Integrated Manufacturing for Corporate Strategy, Capital Budgeting, and Information Management.- 25. Decision Support Systems and Management.